Long was dying, the spell eating away at him like a carnivorous parasite… But that was fine. Beneficial, even. He had known from the moment he sensed that soothing presence in his mind, all those months ago, that this venture would be his end.
It’s strange. This last half-year has been only a small fraction of my life, and yet it has grown to encompass everything I will be remembered as. While he would die, the Black Cloak Group would live on, stronger for his contributions. For all that he had put himself above his juniors, there was a seed of contentment at the core of him – and for the first time in a long while, he chose not to question it.
The sect Elder was throwing out spells in wide arcs; large, hard-to-avoid blasts that while quite potent, were not necessarily the best tool for the job – Black Cloak Long was not a particularly agile combatant, when measured against his peers in the core realms.
Even now, he still can’t tell where I am. Not precisely enough to aim a direct attack. Though it felt like his innards were awash with acid, he couldn’t help but smile. Truly, an art worth dying for.
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Typhon. Typhon. Owl’s Guidance. Adjust for where the divination thought he should aim in the next few moments, and- Wind Cutter! Typhon!
He was fighting a phantasm, a small black shape that disappeared when you turned to look at it, the slightest twinge of instinct on the edge of delirium. Even now, all his higher senses – the centuries of refinement to his body, mind, and soul that made him who he was – were telling him that there was nothing there. He was reduced to the crudest method possible: throw spells, and see if they hit something they weren’t supposed to. And even that wasn’t guaranteed to work; at every point, whatever supreme concealment art the Black Cloak was using tried to persuade him there was a logical explanation, a reason for why his spells were stopping where they were.
Dust and thrown-up debris, tricks of perspective, distracting flashes of illusory light and sound – it seemed like the world itself was conspiring to keep his opponent hidden.
“Junior, do you require assistance?” White Knuckle seemed to have subdued his own opponent, the man slung between his arms unconscious and giving off steam from his burnt skin.
“I believe not, elder brother.” Actually, I’m having a devil of a time pinning them down. This spell is a perfect counter to tracking arts; even my divinations can only reveal them a step removed – see the consequences of actions, not the actions themselves. He had never encountered a stealth art even a fraction this powerful.
The two Elders had a brief exchange through their sense and telepathy. I need to immobilise them somehow. While still hammering the area with spells, he began constructing the spellform for Sea God’s Net. Hopefully they haven’t been downplaying their evasive skills too much. He pumped qi into the spell, flaring his arms out as-
A bundle of hot needles shot through his mind, shredding the spell before it could manifest. His spiritual veins went wild, qi running backwards and forwards as he fought to regain control over himself. The Telepathic Bond failed, even his simplistic combat arts were thrown into disarray, and for a disorienting moment the battlefield was still.
He reined in his qi, but the damage was done; there had been a gap in his attacks, and now he had no idea where the Black Cloak was.
“White Knuckle, get the other one out of here.” You have no options to fight this person, save overwhelming destruction. And you can’t do that while carrying that fragile dead weight.
Knuckle’s sense flared, and the next moment he burst into motion, leaping across the ground and cracking the earth with each step. Winding Wind shadowed him, his instincts straining, ready to react to the slightest hint of movement or presence. He had only barely reacted in time before, but now that he was forewarned-
[Have you ever watched a crane fish?] A voice, masculine and smooth, appeared in his mind.
Knuckle stopped, both of them instantly on guard. He tensed, but there was nothing to do; whatever spell the man was using, it wasn’t like Telepathic Bond. There was no source, no directionality to the telepathy – no way to follow it back to the caster.
[I’ve always thought they were beautiful animals. The way they can stand still for so long, a blade hanging over the water…]
A faint distortion as something pierced through White Knuckle’s shield, and Winding Wind was casting even before he recognised that was what it was. Moderate the strength; White Knuckle can take a full attack, but not the man in his arms. The Sea God’s Net was cast properly this time, a rippling net of lightning and spacial folds expanding from his hands to cover a wide area around his senior.
Knuckle’s eyes flashed in recognition, and a second shield, this one visible, expanded out from his skin as the outer one buckled against the weight of his attack.
The Sea God’s Net constricted space under it, while also shocking its captives to immobilise them. Knuckle’s inner shield distorted, something attempting to breach through, but before it could succeed the net folded around the two – three, hopefully – people, binding everything together in a tangle of lightning.
Black Cloak Sen’s not-quite-black cloak caught fire, and smoke, unable to escape the spacial restriction, filled the internal space of the net. I can’t see him, but I should be able to-! Winding Wind scraped the edges of the net across White Knuckle’s shield, forcing him out of the spacial folds while Sen – and anything else, theoretically – was stuck inside. He let out a breath of relief. He won’t be able to escape that, not without alerting me. It should be over, assuming they didn’t have a third member lurking about.
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[Invisible to the fish below… Until it drops down.] The net broke as a foreign qi invaded it, corrupted it. His instincts gave a small twitch, and he reflexively poured qi into a windstorm around himself, but it was too late – the needle-like tip of a stiletto punctured through his left eye, burying the blade in the meat of his brain.
“W-!” The next moment was beyond his ability to parse; things moved, that was all he could say. His soul strained to support his failing mind as he attempted to build a healing spell, but the knife in his head must have been given a truly malicious enchantment; his efforts were slow, and clumsy. He was forced to cast a lesser, simpler spell, one that barely stopped the bleeding. He cast it a second time, then a third.
It was enough to gain an awareness of his surroundings. He was lying on the grass, with a man-shaped shadow falling over him. The knife pulled free from the mess of blood and humours, and Winding Wind almost struck out before the figure in front of him resolved into White Knuckle. His mouth only barely worked, but he was able to choke out an “Is it..?”
Knuckle gestured with his chin. He wrestled his sense into function, and cast it out around where he had fallen. Black Cloak, eighth realm. Still conscious, but his spine is shattered, and his qi is completely depleted. A somewhat anticlimactic win, but it was a win. White Knuckle must have hit him as the knife was going in. “The… oth’r..?”
“Alive as well. Two prisoners.”
[Ha, ha.] As the mocking laughter echoed in their heads, White Knuckle immediately sprang over to knock the Black Cloak unconscious. [Not two.]
But before he could reach, an explosion of caustic energy washed over the area. Winding Wind, unable to move, could only grimace as it cut through his spiritual sense like embers through cotton. It settled over him, burning down his soul until he was forced to constrain it back inside his body.
Moments passed where he was effectively blind; his remaining eye was pointed upwards, and he wasn’t healed enough to regain control of anything below his jaw. At least the knife is out. He cast healing spells, moving on to more complex and effective ones as his ability to reason was restored. Feeling in his body returned, his eye grew back, and eventually he was able to roll over and haul himself up.
The scene wasn’t much different from when he had last seen it; the explosion had been purely spiritual, so there wasn’t any damage. The Black Cloak’s body was even intact, though obviously dead, and White Knuckle was crouched over their remaining prisoner, shielding him. Sea God’s Net had been completely unravelled by the otherworldly energy, but it seemed that the man within was still breathing.
Weakly, he raised his arm and wiped blood from his face. The amount of foreign qi… “Is this fixable?”
His senior Elder had a grave look on his face. “Not by us. With the concentration…” This might turn into a second contagious zone.
“We need to get this contained as soon as possible. Go; I’ll catch up when I'm able.”
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Long was walking through a dark wood. The trees were narrow and crowded, white birches that burst straight up from the soil like pillars bracing against the top of the world. The canopy blocked any view of the sky, making the surroundings seem claustrophobic despite being outdoors. There was a trail of sorts, but it would be a harsh trek for a deer, let alone a mortal. Luckily, he was more than able to deal with the uneven terrain and multitude of tripping roots, so the wood was actually rather pleasant.
Now and then he would hear the call of a wolf, but he wasn’t worried; even a fully-grown spirit wolf would have trouble biting through his immaculate black cloak. He simply walked on, enjoying the scenery. There was nothing here that could threaten him, especially not after…
…Especially not after I… After I..? A chill went down his spine. After I died?
A cold wind cut through the wood, its howl joining with the wolves’ in a duet. Long’s gaze dropped down to his body. His cloak was exactly how it should be, pitch-dark and untouched by dust or sweat. Am I dead? Surely I wouldn’t keep my body..? He felt entirely too vital to be a soul returned to the Wheel. Did he actually survive? I burnt myself as fuel for the grandmaster’s spell, and everything went black.
He stood for a time, but eventually, unable to solve the mystery of his survival, he continued on. The wood seemed never-ending, and he journeyed for what felt like years without encountering anything but trees and the distant call of wolves. His mental fortitude waxed and waned; sometimes he despaired, while other times he accepted the situation with absolute peace.
Eventually he encountered something new; a wet tearing sound, far in the distance, only audible because it was so different from what he had grown accustomed to. Part of him wanted to rush blindly towards it, but he retained his cautious nature; he crept along, making no sounds as he approached.
It was… A person, perhaps, though not a human. It was tall, and furred from head to toe. Though it squatted on two legs, it tore strips from a gutted deer with long claws, and chewed the meat with a wolf-like snout. Antlers protruded from its head, and it had a tail like a lamb’s.
The monster turned, and looked directly at him. “Either eat or leave, I don’t care which.” She – he didn’t know why he thought of the thing as female, but he did – turned back to the eviscerated deer, leaving him frozen in place.
He watched the thing eat for a long minute, but eventually he walked forward to join it in squatting next to the carcass.
“So this is Hell, then?”
“No.” She pulled a rib free and bit into it, swallowing meat and bone alike. “You’re disgusting.”
Long blinked. “Am I?”
“You are.” Her teeth were long and sharp, like a child would imagine a wolf’s teeth to be. “Your people have torn away everything that makes you alive. You were like a corpse, even before you died.”
Peace settled into Long’s bones; derision was a poison he had long since grown used to. “I suppose you’re here to judge me, demon?” The thing had said he wasn’t in Hell, but he would be a fool to take it at its word. “If you have appeared to berate me for my sins, you are wasting your breath.”
She snarled. “You are dead. Your hunger is gone. There can be no greater sin than that.”
She continued with her meal, and Long was silent. For a time. “If I am not in Hell, then where am I?”
“My stomach.” Bone cracked as she wrenched the corpse apart further.
Your stomach? “Your stomach is a dark and endless wood?”
“My stomach is hunger, and violence. I am the feeling of a stone spitting a skull, of the pain and triumph of childbirth, of the endless ravening of all life against itself. I am the strong eating the weak, and the weak eating the strong.” The deer disappeared down her gullet in pieces. Eventually there was only a stain of blood, disappearing into the soil.
She stood, extending to a height half-again as tall as a man, and began to lope off. Long followed, not wanting to lose the only living thing he had seen in this place.
“Is this a test? Am I meant to prostrate myself and repent? Deny your accusations?”
The demon snorted. “I don’t care what you do. The test was survival, and you already failed. You are dead.” She sped up, and Long had to work properly to keep up.
“Surely you have something to say.” He huffed. “If I’m dead, why have I not returned to the Wheel? Why do I have my body?” She was pulling ahead, even though he was moving at a dead sprint. “Who even are you? Answer me! How do I escape from here?”
Her long legs carried her away. He continued sprinting for hours after she had disappeared into the trees, but eventually he slowed and collapsed. The howling of wolves, his constant companion, seemed to draw closer.
Then, a reply, echoing all around him. “There is no escape from here, Long of the Black Cloak. There is no return from death. Only rebirth through consumption.”
Through the trees, he spied a flash of grey fur. Then another, and another. The howling was very close, now.